


Love Songs for Tin Men

by stone_in_focus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drabble, Episode: s10e18 Book of the Damned, Episode: s10e22 The Prisoner, Graceless Verse, Human Castiel, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV Castiel, POV Second Person, Romance, Season/Series 10, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 15:50:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4025764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stone_in_focus/pseuds/stone_in_focus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You tell him it's not his decision to make. </p><p>Or, an exploration of Cas' thought process regarding his own agency.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Songs for Tin Men

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in "graceless!verse," i.e., a canon-divergent AU in which Cas becomes human and uses his grace to get rid of the Mark (because I'm too attached to the idea to let go of it, and screw canon, anyway). Could be viewed as a companion to my [10x16 coda](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3618408), except written from Cas' perspective this time instead of Dean's.

They had all asked you the same question: Ephraim. Bartholomew. Hannah, to an extent. And now Metatron.

_What’s out there for you, Castiel?_

You thought you knew. Once. Once, when you fronted an entire crusade for free will; when you rebelled against the heaven God no longer wanted. Futile, perhaps, but at least it gave your brothers and sisters the chance to think for themselves.  _Choose_  for themselves.

These days, however, you’re beginning to feel just as clueless as the angels when you first showed them that they could forge a path for themselves. Because the more you navigate your own, you come to realize how little you understand about the world your Father created; how little you truly control in spite of—or maybe because of—free will.

You suppose that would be what most people, Ms. Morissette excluded, would call “ironic.”

There is the mission. There has always been the mission. But as much as your blood curdles to admit it, what if Metatron has a point? What if someday, you will no longer have a cause to bind yourself to? There are doubts, of course, about you surviving all of this, even with your grace restored. That possibility has been hovering over you ever since you fell—no,  _jumped—_ and it’s always been a possibility you’ve been willing to risk if it meant keeping those closest to you safe.  

But despite all logic, all odds, you’ve survived far worse. Countless are the times you’ve drowned, become one with the void, and yet you always found yourself drifting—or pulled—back ashore. Even the apocalypse never came to pass, in no small part due to three individuals who insisted that the definition of “family” is not contingent upon blood type.

What if you are able to defy the impossible once more? What if you truly cure Dean? And what if you’re still standing at the end of it all? Where would your place be then? Your purpose?

An angel should know no fear—not intimately, not in the way it makes you feel a sweat at your brow or a shudder in your bones—and yet the very thought… _terrifies_  you.

But you’ve never fit the mold. Not really. The likes of Metatron and Lucifer aside, you’re probably the poorest example of an angel, actually. One with a crack in his chassis, although you’re still not sure what exactly that means other than…defective. Inadequate.

Broken.

When you were human and vulnerable to pain—not just wounds of the flesh, but the kind of pain for which there are no words; only inarticulate groanings in the hollow of your chest—Ephraim had confronted you, surmised that you preferred the life of a mere mortal. Josiah, too, insisted he no longer saw the angel you once were. You wanted to tell them that they couldn’t be further from the truth; that you are no different than any of them. No better than any of them. That if they wanted your complete honesty, you would choose to exist as a celestial being without hesitation simply because…

Because you do not have the strength to carry the weight of a human heart.

But then you think of a man in a confessional. You think of a man with longings, a man with feelings—those dangerous, imperfect, but wondrous  _feelings._  A man with a hope for first-time experiences, for old ones to be made new. A desire to see beyond his vocation, beyond the veil of death. A man who wants  _more._

And suddenly, it’s impossible to look away from what you’ve been ignoring for so long:

_Don’t you miss the feeling of being human?_

In the moment, while Metatron had guzzled down his decadent breakfast and slurped at his fingers, you’d found yourself at a loss, but perhaps it was only because you already knew the answer. An answer that has you hurtling down the very same path you’d warned Hannah against, and try as you might to keep a level head and steer your course straight, it’s like…you’re falling all over again.

But it’s different this time. This time, there is no wavering. No cowering, no flinching. No looking back and wishing for what was. No regrets.

This time, you embrace it.

The night Dean needed you, you went to him. You knew fraternization was unwise—and as he avoided your gaze, you suspected he knew it, too—but when the inevitability of death looms dark and heavy in the small hours of the morning, good judgment often lays itself at the mercy of subjection. Strangely, you’ve learned to pay it no mind. You’ve gone too far, too late for common sense. You suppose it was too late the moment you first laid a palm to his shoulder. You’ve seen the way his soul burns with the ferocity of a thousand suns, and nothing makes you more desperate than watching it twist into something unrecognizable, seething and tainted by a cursed mark for which you would tear the earth from its bones to procure a remedy.

For now, all you have are the hands that once put him back together. Even with your grace intact, you lack the power to breathe into him life anew, but you are not so old that you cannot, as he wryly puts it, be taught “new tricks.” You will kneel at his feet; anoint him with kisses; baptize him in your bodily warmth. He will call out to you, and you will feel as if you are hearing him for the first time. You will move inside him,  _with_  him. You will fill him with a joy unspeakable in the most literal sense, and you will tremble when bearing witness to the miracle that draws out the crinkles around his eyes and the curve in his lips.

Because it will be, as it always has been, for his sake.

But when you return to the confines of the Continental, rolling along the dusty back roads with nothing but those overly sentimental ballads to inexplicably give you wet eyes and a dry throat—how is it possible to  _feel_  something that was once so alien to you?—you can’t help but wonder if it could be for your sake, too.

The sex with Dean had felt like…what’s that human analogy again? Like an itch you couldn’t scratch at. Something budding underneath the surface that couldn’t fully bloom. Copulation as a human had been much more concentrated, every single one of your nerves solely focused on sensitivity without all the…well, distractions, for want of a better term. It was how you had been designed—being able to sense every pulse, every tremor, allowing you to calculate your next move with the greatest precision—but ironically enough, you find yourself dulled to the intensity of it all, yearning for more now that you know it’s out there. And granted, your brief flirtation with human sexuality had been wonderful in the moment…

But it hadn’t been with someone you loved. With someone who dared to love you back.

Logically, you know the world had color before you knew Dean. Logically, you know that—wings notwithstanding—gravity keeps you footed firmly upon solid ground. Logically, you know that starlight only shines from the heavens above and does not, in fact, dwell in the eyes of any living being. But when Dean enters the room, you realize you’ve come to  _understand_  the very love songs you thought were utter nonsense.

And when you watch him collapse to his knees before the gutted corpses, shaking and soaked in blood, you come to realize just how difficult it is to listen to them.

Eventually, that blood is yours. Eventually, it’s your neck at the point of his blade, your hand clenched around his arm, your breathless pleas throwing out the rope and hoping he’ll grab on. But where you once saw the world in a kaleidoscope of colors, a deep, sickly crimson is all that washes over you now. And when you feel yourself beginning to crumble underneath that feral glean in his eyes, you realize that this is not how you want it to end. This is not how you want to die. This…this is  _not_  how you want to remember him.

So you don’t.

You don’t think of a man sundered, ravaged by the darkest horrors even by hell’s standards. Instead, you think of that man in a confessional. You think of the playful punches of an enchanting young redhead. You think of the smiles and laughter of two brothers filling in the hollow spaces of a tiny kitchen and making it home. You think of the moment you nearly wept at a mere whisper—

_“God, I love you.”_

—and suddenly, with one gentle stroke of your thumb against the heel of his palm, the answer has never been so clear.

On a starless night, you lead Dean to an open field, taking his hand in yours, and state your proposal. He says it’s too much, asks you if you’ve lost your mind, and you overhear Sam and Charlie exchanging whispers as they shoot wary glances from where they linger over by the Impala.  

But you tell him it’s not his decision to make.

Hannah is swift with the blade, lifts the incense-laden bowl to your Adam’s apple, and you pour out your forgiveness, your adoration, your affection…your  _everything._  You only wait long enough for her to heal the wound, then ask her to join the others and leave you be. There is no such ceremony for this—because Dean isn’t wrong to question; what angel would willingly give up their grace?—but it feels sacred and intimate all the same. And despite running on empty, you still sense an electricity coursing through you when the Enochian blessing rolls off your tongue, your grace setting the sweet-scented incense aglow. No longer is there fear of the unknown; no longer do you dread what the oncoming days will bring you. Because before you stands the man that makes you feel things so terrible, so lovely. Before you stands the man that reminds you of why you fell for humanity in the first place. And when you offer up the bowl and watch him breathe in, you finally put a word to the thrumming in your heart:

_Anticipation._

If feelings are your weakness, the crack in your chassis, then to hell with it. Because this a good family. This is a good life.

And when you kiss the crook of his arm where flesh is made new, the light of age-old constellations igniting a familiar fire in his eyes, you know it is completely, unequivocally yours.


End file.
